Ben Smith's Blog

In the second part of the Track These Stats series, I am asking golfers to keep track of how many putts per round they have. Keeping track of total putts is crucial in determining the overall quality of a player’s putting.

When counting putts per round, only count strokes made from the putting surface. This statistic does not include strokes from the fringe or off-the-green made with a putter.

Keeping better stats from your golf rounds will help you improve your game. To help make sense of what to track, I'll be focusing on what stats to track and what they mean in the Track These Stats series. Let's start with the tee shot and track how many fairways you hit when you play.

First, start by keeping track whether your tee shot ends up in the fairway. Obviously, hitting fairways is important to playing better golf as players are able to control approach shots better from fairway lies than lies in the rough.

One of the easiest things to neglect in a player's pre-shot routine is ball position. However, correct ball position is critical to hitting good shots consistently. This month's The Basics post focuses on where the golf ball goes before you swing. There are two aspects of ball position to address with each shot:

1. How far away from the ball should the player stand?

Ideally, the player should stand in a position where the arms hang freely underneath the shoulders. Fred Funk is a good player to emulate with his setup.

Sometimes the basics are hard to practice, but they are the most important to practice. Today’s article focuses on alignment.

Alignment is one of the most important pre-shot fundamentals. Without proper alignment, your body has to make a corrective action to hit the ball towards the target. Why make your golf swing work harder than it needs to?

Here’s the proper way to align before you hit a golf shot:

- Point the clubface at your target
- Set your feet underneath your shoulders, parallel to the target line (an imaginary line from the target through the golf ball)

Back in the second week we practiced the chip shot, a shot that stays low to the ground and rolls like a putt. That shot is good for situations where you have space between yourself and the hole with no obstacles forcing you to carry the ball in the air.

Our fourth week in the Short Game series focuses on lag putting. While it is impossible to avoid the occasional three-putt green, your scoring will improve with dedicated practice. This week’s drills focus on helping you control the speed of your putts so that more of your longer putts end closer to the hole.

The biggest difference in why one golfer plays better than another is largely based onhow well the golfer can play from 120 yards and in. That yardage is based on how far a good player hits a full pitching wedge and includes every shot shorter than that distance.

The next time you play, analyze your score like this to show the importance of these shots. Count every shot you play where you hit a full pitching wedge or less, including putts.